New York Times: "The Iraqi military, alongside thousands of Shiite militia fighters, began a large-scale offensive on Monday to retake the city of Tikrit from the Islamic State, a battle that could either become a pivotal fight in the campaign to reclaim north and west Iraq or deepen the country’s bloody sectarian divide."

Daily Beast: "In less than 12 hours, there were two separate attempts to penetrate the White House grounds."

Los Angeles Times: "The video-recorded fatal shooting by Los Angeles police of a homeless man on skid row Sunday night has investigators looking for additional footage that could shed light on the deadly confrontation."

Public Service Announcement

The Hill: "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Tom Frieden on Sunday [Feb. 1] warned that the U.S. could see a 'large outbreak' of measles.... There are at least 102 reported cases in 14 states, according to the CDC. Frieden said that the U.S. is 'likely to see more cases.'... The said the best way to prevent the spread of measles was vaccination.Frieden said despite the U.S.'s 92 percent vaccination rate, there is growing evidence more parents are not vaccinating their children."

Get Off Your Ass!Los Angeles Times (Jan. 19): "New research that distills the findings of 47 studies concludes that those of us who sit for long hours raise our average risk of cancer, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and early death."

White House Live VideoMarch 3

2:00 pm ET: Josh Earnest's press briefing

2:20 pm ET: President & Mrs. Obama speak on expanding efforts to help adolescent girls worldwide to attend & stay in school

Adam Goodheart of the Atlantic reviews a book by historian Eric Foner that sheds new light on the Underground Railway that helped Southern black Americans escapes slavery, even though the participants were violating federal law -- openly, too: "It is a little-known historical irony that right up until the eve of Southern secession in 1860, states’ rights were invoked as often by Northern abolitionists as by Southern slaveholders."

CW: How I'll Spend My Weekend. Season 3 of "House of Cards" is up on Netflix now:

Deadline: ESPN suspendsKeith Olbermann for engaging in an "inappropriate" "Twitter War" with some Penn State students. ...

... CW: Hard to believe something like this hasn't happened sooner.

Buzz Aldrin during a spacewalk, November 1966. Last year Aldrin described the photo as the "BEST SELFIE EVER." CW: I'd say he's right.

New York Times: "Hundreds of photographs from the early years of the space age are for sale. That includes the first image taken from space — from an altitude of 65 miles by a camera on a V-2 rocket launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on Oct. 24, 1946. (The boundary to outer space is generally placed at 100 kilometers, or 62.1 miles.) The prints are vintage — dating from that era, not modern reproductions — and come from the collection of a single European collector, said Sarah Wheeler, head of photographs at Bloomsbury Auctions in London."

#OscarsSoWhite. Soraya McDonald of the Washington Post: "Sunday was a study in contradictions; there was overwhelming emphasis on the visibility of black people in Hollywood, yet their peers hadn’t deemed their work fit for nomination in any of the major individual categories."

Common & John Legend accept the award for the song "Glory" from the film "Selma":

The Los Angeles Times' Academy Awards page is here. The main story is here. The list of winners is here.

Los Angeles Times: "A Palm Springs home built using Joseph Eichler’s original blueprints is under contract to sell for $1.29 million. The newly built Modernist design, considered the first true Eichler home developed in 40 years, came to market on Tuesday. According to real estate brokers and developers Troy Kudlac and Ross Stout of KUD Properties Inc., which handled the listing side, it sold that day for the asking price." With slideshow.

If you just can't get enough of the Academy Awards, the L. A. Timeshas a guide to Oscar-related TV shows. If you want to watch the Oscars online, here's where & how.

D. R. Tucker in the Washington Monthly: "... give [Jon] Stewart his props for the positive things he has done over the years. He has inspired a new generation of commentators who will continue to call out political perversity and media mendacity. However, the man was not without his flaws — and the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear was a gigantic one. As Olbermann, Maher and Maddow have long argued, sanity has to defeat fear, not figure out some way to get along with it."

Matt Wilstein of Mediaite: "In addition to canceling Joy Reid‘s daytime show The Reid Report, which MSNBC sources confirmed to Mediaite earlier today, the network is also cancelingRonan Farrow’s show and moving Way Too Early’s Thomas Roberts back to a dayside role, anchoring a straight news show from 1-3 p.m. ET daily. Neither Reid nor Farrow have been fired by the network."

USA Today: "Random House Children's Books said Wednesday it will publish a recently discovered manuscript with Dr. Seuss sketches, called What Pet Should I Get?, on July 28. The publisher plans at least two more books based on materials found in 2013 by his widow, Audrey Geisel, and his secretary...."

Sorry, I am back to being among the legally blind, so I won't be linking to stuff today. I might try to come back if my sight gets a little better & link to stuff that I think looks interesting, but as of yesterday afternoon, I have not been able to see. Period.

Update: for the moment, I am seeing well enough to read a few articles when I ramp the print size WAY up. So, in honor of Christianity highest holy day, I'll concentrate on articles & essay related to religion, starting with ....

The Rev. Alberto Cutié, the handsome Miami priest who defected to become an Episcopal priest when he fell in love and married a woman from his parish, found the pope’s timing ironic.

'They say women can’t be priests because Jesus only called men to be apostles,' he said. 'But the women close to Jesus were the first witnesses of the resurrection. When the men were afraid and hidden, the women went to the tomb and said, "Jesus is risen!" If Easter is the most important part of Christianity, the first to proclaim the message were women. Who could make more effective preachers?'

... Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press (April 5): "Pope Benedict XVI has denounced priests who have questioned church teaching on celibacy and ordaining women, saying Thursday they were disobeying his authority to try to impose their own ideas on the church. Benedict made the rare and explicit criticism from the altar of St. Peter's Basilica in his homily on Holy Thursday, when priests recall the promises they made when ordained."

Dan Frosch of the New York Times: "The Catholic Campaign, which doles out $8 million annually to about 250 groups nationwide, has been under increasing pressure from conservative Catholic groups to ensure that it is not unwittingly aiding organizations that run afoul of church positions on issues like birth control and marriage.... Since 2010, nine groups from across the country have lost financing from the campaign because of conflicts with Catholic principles...."

Heidi Hall of The Tennessean: "The Southern Baptist Convention has spent more than a decade trying to leave behind the racially divided past that created it.... But some consider statements made Saturday by the convention’s top policy representative on his national radio show a setback. On Richard Land Live!,Landaccused black religious leaders — whom he called 'race hustlers' — and President Barack Obama of using the shooting death of an African-American teen in Florida for election-year gains."

Here are Mitt Romney & Paul Ryan on Obama's "War on Religion." And how about that Tim Dolan?:

... So here's the secular warrior at the Easter Week Prayer Breakfast he hosted:

... AND, uh-oh, here -- via the Maddow blog -- are some disrespectful members of Occupy Catholics and Catholics United outside St. Patrick's (TimDolanWorld) in NYC protesting the budget of the good Catholic boy Paul Ryan:

The banner reads, "Were you there when they crucified the poor?"

Law Prof. Robert Burt in a Washington Post opinion piece: In the Bible stories, "... no one has effective coercive authority over God. But in the biblical texts, God is continually reminded — by Abraham, Moses, Job and Jesus — that coercion cannot pry loose what He truly wants from us: not just obedience but loyalty, allegiance and love. It is also hard to exercise coercive authority over our secular leaders — the president during his term in office or life-tenured Supreme Court justices. Political leaders may want our love (or at least our votes), but it may be that, unlike God, they are content to settle for our sullen, enforced obedience."

Apropos of all this -- in this post, which appeared in the Times last week, Matthew Hutson cites studies which show that "superstitious thought, or 'magical thinking,' even as it misrepresents reality, has its advantages."

News Ledes

AP: "CBS newsman Mike Wallace, the dogged, merciless reporter and interviewer who took on politicians, celebrities and other public figures in a 60-year career highlighted by the on-air confrontations that helped make “60 Minutes” the most successful prime-time television news program ever, has died. He was 93." CBS News has a brief remembrance here. ...

Morley Safer remembers Mike Wallace:

... Update: "60 Minutes" reprises some of Wallace's segments here. Next Sunday's "60 Minutes" will be devoted to Wallace.

AP: "The Afghan government and the U.S. signed a deal Sunday governing night raids by American troops, resolving an issue that had threatened to derail a larger pact governing a U.S. presence in the country for decades to come."

Reader Comments (6)

Marie, I am sorry that the slow healing is keeping you away from a banner day in sophistry, starring the incomparable Ross Douthat, the person I will immediately recruit should I ever be tasked with selling s**t as Shinola. Here's a taste: "And the inescapability of religious polarization — whether it pits evangelicals against Mormons, the White House against the Catholic Church, or Rick Santorum against the secular press — during an election year that was expected to be all about the economy is a sign of what happens to a deeply religious country when its theological center cannot hold." My favorite is "the White House against the Catholic Church," when actually it's "everybody who doesn't believe the Catholic malarkey (including most Catholics) against the Catholic Church."

Marie--Be patient with yourself. Take the time to let the eyes heal. If you put the Weader aside for a week, we'll miss you, but we'd miss you more if your sight was permanently damaged by coming to work too soon.

With all the folderol on religion this Easter Sunday (by the way the word Easter derives from a mythical goddess of spring) the Steve Martin video made my morning plus Jack's entertaining the recruitment of Douthat if he should ever be asked to sell shit as Shinola. The only way to survive all this nonsense is with a sense of humor and lots of colored eggs hidden in secret places.

Thanks for all who read Ross Douthat so I don't have to. I have become increasingly dismayed at all the charges back and forth hurled by candidates as to who does or doesn't pass the religious litmus test, or practice the "correct" religion. The idea of people even discussing religious beliefs - their own or anyone else's - in the public square is something I have still not gotten used to. Certainly, when I was growing up, you didn't question another person's faith and you didn't talk about your own , except to family and close friends.That said, Happy Easter to all ! (from an agnostic)

Although it seems we are destined to agree on only a very few things, I nevertheless wish you the very best for a full and speedy recovery, and the very best possible result for recovery of your vision.

Heck, I'm one of those believers in things magical--and, yet, a scientist--so I even dare to hope for miracles! How strange is that?

As one who tried to undertake too much, too soon, following an important surgery and paid the corresponding price, I second the motions of those who have suggested that you should take it easy for a while.